


When Tommy Met Katie

by mandykaysfic



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Backstory, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-21
Updated: 2014-03-21
Packaged: 2018-01-16 11:18:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1345546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandykaysfic/pseuds/mandykaysfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes pawns take a circuitous route trying to avoid the outcome the master planned, only to find when they end up there anyway, that it was where they wanted to be all along.<br/>(Or the short version – Tom Paris falls in love at fifteen!)</p>
<p>Told from Tom's perspective at 5 year intervals from 5 to 35 years of age.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When Tommy Met Katie

**Author's Note:**

> Owen Paris’ master plan is from Polly Bywater’s ‘Throwing off the Bowlines’. 
> 
> Some of the dialogue near the end is from the episode ‘Threshold’, with just a few minor alterations.

**Tommy at Five**

 

Captain Tommy sailed the Enterprise over the stormy seas, pausing briefly to heroically save the youngest cabin boy from the tentacles of a giant octopus. On the way to the Table Islands he encountered the evil pirate Blackbeard and his dreadful crew. “All hands on deck!” he ordered excitedly, and then looked up in a hurry. The Katie girl had her head bent over a PADD. She didn’t say a word and Tommy breathed a sigh of relief. He was supposed to play noisy games only in his room, but that was familiar territory and here the seven seas were vastly unexplored. He peeped at her through his eyelashes and tried an experimental, “Avast, me hearties.” When she continued to read, he added a pretty redheaded girl prisoner to the pirate ship and gallantly rescued her from Blackbeard’s clutches. Princess Katie’s father was the King of Table Islands and he rewarded Captain Tommy with a whole fleet of sailing ships to have for his own. Princess Katie waved her handkerchief at Captain Tommy when he set sail for the great land of Kitchen, where many wondrous foods were to be found, and he promised to bring her back such cookies as she had never tasted before.

Tommy sailed the Enterprise over to Clock Mountain. He watched the pendulum swing to and fro and gave into the temptation to touch the glass cabinet and trace its path with his finger. Sreena didn’t like him touching the old clock; she thought he’d break it. The Katie girl didn’t know about that rule so she wouldn’t say anything and anyway, Tommy knew he wouldn’t harm it. He stood back a little to see the clock face properly. The big hand was almost pointing straight up. When it did, he could have milk and cookies, and then he would have to brush his teeth and go to bed. He sailed the Enterprise up and down the Straits for a bit, keeping a close eye on the black long hand as it moved slowly onward. 

The clock chimed. Seven o’clock at last. Tommy looked anxiously at his baby sitter. She kept reading. He stood on one foot and then the other. He wasn’t supposed to interrupt someone who was busy reading. He jiggled around a bit and sighed loudly. The big hand crept past the twelve. Cautiously he made some ship-on-a-stormy-sea noises, each one just a little louder than the one before. He didn’t want to be sent to bed without his supper. That happened often enough when he’d done things his father or Sreena didn’t like. His father actually didn’t like him calling their housekeeper Sreena, but neither was home now and anyway, Tommy was only thinking her name.

When the big hand finally pointed to the one, Captain Tommy took matters into his own hands. He sailed the Enterprise out to the land of Kitchen. There were the cookies, on a plate on the bench. They were right in the middle of the bench. With the Enterprise tucked under one arm, Tommy dragged a chair over to the bench. He put his ship on the floor and climbed up to kneel upon the seat. Now it was easy to reach the cookies. There were quite a few on the plate, more than the two he was allowed to have. Some must be for the Katie girl. If he took them to her, he figured she would probably get his milk. He held the plate carefully with one hand and the back of the chair with the other. He slid one leg down carefully, but his foot touched the Enterprise instead of the floor and in an effort not to stand on it and break it, Tommy tumbled to the ground. The chair tipped and crashed onto the tiles, while the plate of cookies shot out of his hand.

He’d barely started to pick himself up when a pair of hands reached to help him and the Katie girl was anxiously enquiring whether he was all right. Tommy blinked rapidly in an effort to stem the tears as he waited for her to yell at him as everyone else did, but they dried unshed when she apologized for neglecting him. She straightened up the chair, cleaned up the cookie crumbs and let him have an extra one from the jar. She warmed his milk and even sprinkled cinnamon on it for a treat. She held his hand as they climbed the stairs to his room and tucked Bear into bed with him, even though his father thought five was too big to take a bear to bed any more.

Later, as his eyelids drooped to the sound of her voice reading his current favorite tale of Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, he vowed that when he grew up, he’d always rescue Princess Katie from all monsters in the whole wide world. He hoped she would mind him again soon, but she never did.

 

**Thomas at Ten**

 

“Thomas.”

At the sound of his father’s voice Tom kicked the foot of his bed. He didn’t want to go the Starfleet function. He thought of all the curse words he knew and said a few of the really bad ones out aloud. In his heart he knew it wasn’t his Uncle Cole’s fault he’d been delayed, but if he’d just arrived yesterday when he was supposed to, the two of them would have left on their camping trip already and Tom would not be standing here wearing his fugly suit, with his hair slicked down and his shoes all shiny, being forced to go out with his father and mother. It was just some stupid graduation ceremony. Tom didn’t care about Starfleet; he wanted to join the Federation Naval Patrol when he was old enough. 

“Thomas!”

“Coming!” Tom yelled back. He’d best hurry or his father was likely to forbid him from going camping and confine him to his room again. He checked his hair once more in the mirror and pulled a face. It was still tidy and at least it had grown past the stage he needed to cover it up with a hat. He clattered down the stairs and pulled up sharply at the bottom to walk quietly over to join his parents. It was too bad they lived so close to the Academy; he wouldn’t even get the pleasure of piloting the shuttle part of the way. He had two years of experience at flying now and knew how lucky he was. Not many kids his age were given a chance to sit at the helm, even if it was just an S-class shuttle with no warp drive. 

His mother turned him this way and that, checking him over carefully. She inspected his teeth and nails, and straightened an errant lock of hair that had fallen in his rush to get down the stairs. “You’ll do, Tommy,” she pronounced. 

“You’ll do too, Mom,” he replied cheekily, as he looked at her outfit of soft blues and grey. She looked pretty nice for someone that old, he thought. Naturally, his father wore his dress uniform.

 

Tom shook hands in his best grown up manner with Vice Admiral Edward Janeway and his wife. They had the seats next to the Parises. Mrs Janeway explained to Tom that their daughter was a member of the graduating class. He nodded politely. His father had drilled him remorselessly in the standards of behavior for a Paris and, at least in public, Tom behaved as was expected of the son of the future head of Starfleet. The Vice Admiral and his father almost immediately went into a huddle, conversing with one another in rapid undertones.

No-one who observed the solemn faced blue-eyed boy sitting quietly staring at the ceremony realized he was miles away, paddling a canoe with his Uncle Cole. But he was no longer heading down the Colorado River where they were scheduled to go camping; instead they were on a distant planet that Tom had flown them to, following directions on a faded treasure map. This time, he had to beat Katie Croft in a race to find a golden chalice that held the secrets of an ancient people. His father had to nudge him twice to get his attention.

“Thomas, there she is.”

“Who?” Tom had to come back to Earth in a rush.

“Kathryn. Edward’s daughter.”

“Oh. Right.” Tom obediently focused on the woman crossing the stage. Not quite tiny, she was still shorter than his mom. Her hair was pulled back in a bun. So she graduated from Starfleet. Big deal, he thought, so had all these other people and his dad didn’t particularly seem interested in any of them. When the ceremony was over, Tom managed to slip away from his parents and the Janeways. 

 

Later, when his father began to chastise him for disappearing before he could speak to Kathryn Janeway, his mother abruptly interrupted and began one of those strange grown-up conversations that Tom could never quite follow, consisting as it did of half sentences and veiled suggestions that sounded like they meant one thing but somehow didn’t. 

For once he was glad to be sent to his room. He kicked off his not-so-shiny shoes and swapped his suit for the jeans he’d had on earlier and an almost clean t-shirt. He flung himself on his bed and returned to his treasure hunting daydream. Again he found the treasure ahead of Katie with seconds to spare. He debated briefly whether to let her win the next time round as she was pretty good for a girl, but a definitive ‘nah!’ escaped his lips and he picked up his well-read copy of ‘20,000 Leagues under the Sea’.

 

**Tom at Fifteen**

 

Tom took the stairs down to the foyer slowly, not because he’d been injured on the ski slopes - far from it, but he wanted to avoid the others in his group for a while. Sometimes he wished his father practiced what he preached. It was all very well, having to listen to the Admiral’s speech on Starfleet’s Prime Directive every year when all that the Admiral’s son wanted was a little bit of non-interference in his own life. He’d resigned himself to a career in Starfleet, but he really didn’t want to spend time with his future classmates, the ones who were also sons and daughters of various Starfleet officers, during his school breaks. 

He paused for a minute when a group of four came in through the doors, but they were all older. He didn’t recognize any of them and his shoulders sagged with relief. Then the shortest of the group, a woman in a formfitting blue and silver suit, pulled off her hat and shook her head. Brown hair with a reddish tone swung out, rippling over her shoulders. Tom’s breath hitched and he wished she’d do it again. She laughed at something one of the others said; a rich, deep laugh that caused something in his gut to tighten. She smiled, and he thought a bolt of lightning must have struck his heart. He had to get closer. He stumbled a little on the next step then swiftly pulled himself up and looked around. He drew a sigh of relief; nobody had noticed. Paris men did not trip over their own feet. He pulled back his shoulders, but ducked his head to watch his feet as he concentrated on getting himself to the bottom of the staircase. When he finally looked up again, they’d gone.

She must have gone to get changed, Tom reasoned. He would see her again, he vowed, and soon. The rec room was the logical place for skiers to congregate in the evenings so he headed there. She hadn’t been there the previous evening, but maybe she’d arrived only that day. He flung himself into an armchair in a corner of the room and brooded. Should he be playing pool, and winning of course, when she came into the room? He imagined himself bent over the cue, an expression of concentration on his features. The crack of the white on the colored would divert her attention from her companions and she’d look at the table in time to see the red kiss the black and sink into the side pocket, while the cue ball rolled smoothly to perfectly set up his next shot. When he cleared the table, she would offer to play him, because naturally she’d be good too.

Or maybe he’d be standing at the fireplace, leaning nonchalantly against the mantelpiece, a drink in his hand. She’d look up and see him and he’d raise his glass to her. She’d come over to speak to him. He’d say something witty and she’d laugh that wonderful laugh of hers. Even hearing it in his imagination made his insides tingle. Her hair would shine in the firelight, and he’d stoke it. It would be soft beneath his fingers. She would invite him back to her room and…and then he was aware of his body hardening. He flushed and tugged his sweater down.

At that moment, a noisy group entered the rec room. It was them. Tom felt another wave of heat across his face and he hunkered down in the chair. He couldn’t let anybody see him like this. He watched as they commandeered a pair of sofas and continued their conversation. He picked up only snippets of phrases that he had to strain to hear. He desperately wanted to find out her name, but her companions teasingly called her ‘Commander’. She was Starfleet! 

When it was safe, he got up to leave. He sidled as close to the sofas as possible but one of the men, Riker, he heard the others call him, was telling a joke. He couldn’t stay near without it looking odd so he hurried to his room where he stretched out on his back and stared at the ceiling. Thoughts of Commander… Katie, his mind supplied, filled his mind. Commander Katie in a Starfleet uniform of red and black, wisely advising her captain, smoothly diplomatic, leading away missions that would include Ensign Tom Paris, (pilot extraordinaire), as part of the team, always ready to fly her across the galaxy at a moment’s notice. And when she made captain, the youngest ever, beating Kirk by a few months, she would be given the newest, most advanced starship and naturally, she would appoint Tom as her chief helmsman. 

For a time, Tom’s subconscious warred between designing a suitable state-of-the-art starship and a picturing a nebulous future in which he and Katie were friends and partners - and lovers – forever.

After a night restless of vivid dreams, Tom woke early. He dressed quickly in a blue and red ski suit. After several fruitless hours of searching for her, he plucked up enough courage to ask his group leader, the bored lieutenant who’d been assigned to supervise them, if he knew where Riker’s group might be. He thought he was successful at keeping his disappointment hidden when he heard they’d left that morning. He managed a brisk nod and turned formally on his heel. At that moment, his future plans crystallized. He would not use his father’s connections to seek out Commander Katie as he’d first thought to do. Instead, he would concentrate on being the best damned Starfleet cadet, and when he graduated top of his class, he’d find her and then…

 

**Tommy at Twenty**

 

Tom loved France, or more correctly, he loved Marseilles. He loved the food, the drink, the women. He loved being away from his father too, but he pushed thoughts of the Admiral to the back of his mind and tried to concentrate on the pool table. Chez Sandrine, his current location, was practically his second home and he made a point of returning for at least part of every semester break. 

Sandrine herself left the bar to stand by the pool table and watch Tom only just beat his opponent. She barely gave them enough time to shake hands before congratulating him personally. She always flirted outrageously, and often more than flirted with any good looking male that visited her establishment. She may have had a reputation as a man-eater, but Tom didn’t see her like that. He liked to think he was special. She always interrupted whatever she was doing to make time for him. It mattered not that she was perhaps double his age (a lady never told); she made him feel good about himself. Sandrine also neither knew nor cared who Admiral Paris was and whether Tom could be useful to further a relationship with the man. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close. She steered him back to the bar and settled him with another drink.

“Tommy, mon cher, your game, she was a little ‘off’ tonight, non?”

Tom took a hefty swallow and reveled in the burn of the real alcohol even as he let Sandrine’s concern sooth his ruffled feelings. He loved listening to her voice. There were no universal translators here and she spoke English with a strong French accent and turn of phrase.

“The Admiral,” and Tom frowned as he emphasized the rank, “gave me a B-minus in survival.”

“The Admiral - your papa, yes?”

“That’s the one. I deserved an A. ‘I will not play favorites, Thomas,’ he said, but that’s taking things too far the other way. I worked my ass off in that course. I knew I’d have to be better than everyone else and I made sure of it. But I’m never good enough for him. Nothing I ever do makes him happy. He’s always telling me how I could have done it better.” He swore in low tones, and the hand not holding his drink clenched. “He’s always on about the Paris name and my duty to uphold it, to be the best.” He downed the rest of his drink and slammed the glass onto the bar. 

Sandrine leaned forward. She drew a deep, sympathetic breath. Her cleavage caught Tom’s eye, as she intended. She murmured a few endearments in French, and then switched back to English as she slid another drink towards him. 

“I need the good grades, Sandrine. It’s…it’s part of my plan,” confided Tom eventually. It had taken another couple of drinks to get him past the anger at his father, but now his tongue had loosened, and if he had to concentrate to get all of the words out correctly, neither Tom nor Sandrine cared. 

“Tell me about your plan, Tommy. You ’ave never mentioned ’im before. ’E is a good plan, oui?”

“Oh yeah, he is a good plan. I’m going to graduate top of my class, you know. I lead Nova Squadron – we’re the elite, y’know. The best. But I have to graduate top.” Tom rambled on some more, but even under the influence of a not inconsiderable amount of alcohol, he kept his real reason to himself. After all, one did not discuss the woman one loved with another, particularly when the love of his life did not yet know she occupied that position, and he vowed once more he would not search her out until he was ‘the best’. He’d managed to make up for almost failing stellar cartography in his first year by taking an extra credit course in advanced spatial geometry. And now the visions of the B-minus his father had given him danced before his eyes once again. “A fucking B-minus,” he muttered.

Sandrine heard the despondency beneath the anger and later, when she applied her universal panacea, if she heard him cry out ‘Katie’, she also knew when to keep things to herself.

 

**Thomas at Twenty-five**

 

“You’ve fucked up royally, Thomas. You’ve ruined years of planning.”

Tom shrank back into the pillows. His father’s raging temper was like nothing he’d ever experienced before. He was used to the ice cold anger, the litany of faults recited with nary a vulgar curse or even a hint of blasphemy, the orders thinly disguised as ‘suggestions’ to make things right again. Not this. Never like this. This was a madman with waving arms and a red face, whose words and tone for once had not been deliberately chosen and carefully used, just tumbling out of his mouth. And what was the plan his father was raving about? He’d just killed his friends, for chrissakes. He was in hospital, lucky to be alive. He was scared, he was hurting, and he wanted his father’s support for what he would have to do, just this once.

“Dad?”

“Didn’t you realize? Haven’t you understood one thing I’ve tried to teach you about the Paris legacy? Captain of the Starfleet flagship, then Admiral, Head of Starfleet operations, and then…You were to go all the way to the top. We had it planned. We spent years on the master plan. You destroyed everything we worked for in an instant.”

“Mom never mentioned—” 

“Fool. Your mother had nothing to do with this. Edward Janeway and I planned this from the time you were born. We wanted the same thing, control of Starfleet, but Gretchen had the misfortune to produce only daughters. Kathryn’s slated for a captaincy, but for a female to reach the upper echelons of Starfleet – you know the situation as well as anyone. When you arrived, he approached me with the suggestion that we merge our future goals. We realized the Paris-Janeway dynasty would be more powerful than either alone.”

Tom blinked. He had no idea how to respond to this wholesale dispensation of his future. It was almost too much, coming on top of Caldik.

“Of course, Edward’s death caused a minor setback when Kathryn became depressed afterwards, but I dealt with that. Phoebe was extraordinarily cooperative. It helped when she wanted what I did – a healthy, sane Kathryn Janeway. Naturally, I’ll fix this too. I’ve made my decision. Everything has been planned. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut. I’ll see to the filing of the reports and you will agree with everything that you are told. There will be no stain on your record. Is that understood?”

Shocked, all Tom could do was whisper, “Yes, Sir.”

“I didn’t hear that.”

“Yes, Sir.”

 

Reports were filed. When he was released from hospital, Tom found he was completely exonerated at the expense of the blame landing firmly on one of his dead friends, and a bare dip of the head in confirmation from his father at the hearing was all the support that he got. 

If Tom seemed quiet during the day, his friends and colleagues assumed he was still grieving. It was the nights that plagued him, when he couldn’t concentrate on the activities of daily living he needed to perform that kept him from thinking too deeply. The dreams of his dead friends were bad enough, but the images of Commander Katie were worse. For ten years now he’d loved her, planned to be worthy of her, dreamed of the time she’d love him in return. 

Sure, his father had ‘made things right’, but Tom knew they weren’t really right. As he saw it, he had two choices: to live his father’s lie and still be able to find and serve with Commander Katie, or tell the truth, face the consequences, accept that he would most likely be forced to leave Starfleet and in all probability lose his dream future.

Tom told the truth. 

 

**Tom at Thirty**

 

Lieutenant Tom Paris and Captain Kathryn Janeway lay on adjoining biobeds in the USS Voyager’s Sickbay. They still had to spend three more days in Sickbay while their genetic codes stabilized. The Doctor had dimmed the lights and taken himself offline. 

The whole ‘evolving into a new life-form, mating, having alien offspring and returning to human’ experienced had left Tom a little overwhelmed. He turned onto his side and spoke softly. “Captain, I'm sorry. I…I don't know what to say except I don't remember very much about, ah, you know.” He wished he did.

“What makes you think it was your idea? Sometimes it's the female of the species that initiates mating. But apology accepted, nonetheless. You may be interested to know I'm putting you in for a commendation. Regardless of the outcome, you did make the first transwarp flight.” 

“Thank you, Captain.” Tom hesitated. 

“Is there something wrong, Lieutenant?”

“Breaking the threshold, it was incredible. But somehow it doesn't mean as much as I thought it would.”

“Oh?”

“I guess I went into this looking for a quick fix. I thought making history would change things, not just my service record - my reputation. I saw it as a way to redeem myself, so others would think differently of me.” He wondered if he dared to mention she was the one he really meant.

“If I'm not mistaken, you've changed quite a few minds on this ship. You've earned a lot of people's respect and admiration.”

“Yeah. But I'm starting to realize that it's not other people's opinions I should be worried about. It's mine. It seems, Captain,that I still have a few barriers to break. I just hope they're not theoretical impossibilities.” What came out of his mouth next wasn’t anything he’d planned – the words simply spilled out. “Of course, it’s just…Commander Chakotay shouldn’t have left the babies behind. I really wanted to see my Dad’s face when he saw the first members of the Paris-Janeway dynasty.”

“The Paris-Janeway dynasty?”

Tom flushed. “Ah, yes, well, you know…,” he trailed off awkwardly. “The master plan organized by our fathers - you, me, marriage, babies, Starfleet, the universe.”

“Owen used to talk about you a great deal when I served on the Al-Batani. I don’t remember hearing about a ‘master plan’.”

“I didn’t find out about it until Caldik. He told me he’d fix everything and the future he’d planned would still come to pass.” He drew a breath and continued, “I went to your graduation ceremony, did you know? That was the first time I saw you. I wasn’t impressed. I didn’t want to be there so badly that when I saw you again five years later, I didn’t recognize you.”

“It wasn’t the first time,” said Kathryn. “I babysat you once. You would have been about five. You spent the night playing with a sailing ship.” She smiled reminiscently.

“Princess Katie! You're Princess Katie. I never knew. I saved you from the Evil Pirate Blackbeard,” confided Tom with a laugh. 

“Princess Katie, eh? It has a nice ring to it.”

“I always thought so. I liked you because you didn’t yell at me or tell me to be quiet like Serena or my dad always did. I wanted you to come back again, but you never did.”

“I would have gone to the Academy the following year; that was why I never had the opportunity to babysit again. So you went to my graduation ceremony?”

“Yeah. We sat next to your parents. Your hair was pulled back so tightly in that bun I thought you looked cross. I couldn’t work out why Dad wanted to introduce us. You were just this ugly girl,” he remembered and grinned broadly, taking the sting out of his words.

Some of Tom’s earlier words came back to Kathryn. “After babysitting you that one time I never saw you again until Auckland. Five years after graduation I would have…” she thought rapidly, “I would have been serving on the Billings. I’d just been promoted to commander. I don’t remember seeing you again.”

“You had a skiing holiday. I was at the same lodge.” That’s when I fell in love with you, he wanted to add, but he managed to keep that to himself. “I didn’t know who you were than. I got the shock of my life when you arrived at Auckland and realized Commander Katie and Captain Kathryn Janeway were one and the same.”

“You hid it well. I never noticed. Commander Katie?”

“That was what I called you – the woman from the ski lodge in my head whenever I thought about her.”

Thus they were able to pass the time in Sickbay more easily that either had thought possible, and it was the beginning, or maybe not the beginning, of a bright future.

 

**Tom at Thirty-five**

 

“I am pushing.”

Megan Delaney, or was it Jenny, wiped Kathryn’s sweaty brow with a cool cloth. 

Tom Paris-Janeway sat at his wife’s head. He waited until the contraction eased and then murmured in her ear, “You’ve done this once before, remember?”

“No, I don’t and neither do you.”

“Are we ever going to tell him his older siblings are lizards?”

Another contraction hit. “Don’t – make - me laugh,” Kathryn got out in between the next round of pushes.

“Do you want a mirror?” offered Jenny, or was it Megan, from her position at the foot of the bed where she was acting as the EMH’s assistant. “The head is half way out now.”

“No! And if you have your holo-imager anywhere near me I’ll—” Kathryn’s threat to the Doctor was never voiced as a short time later a loud cry filled the Sickbay and then her son was laid upon her stomach.

 

In the latest inter-quadrant subspace communication Owen Paris stared at his grandson, so far away in the delta quadrant, and thought that perhaps now all he wanted was for his family to come home. Tom’s old model of the Enterprise sailing ship would be ready and waiting for James. Along with a new puppy and a miniature space shuttle and some gardening tools and…

END


End file.
